Doctor Therne eBook

CHAPTER II

THE HACIENDA

“What are those?” said Emma presently,
pointing to some animals that were half hidden by
a clump of wild bananas. I looked and saw that
they were two of the mules which the brigands had cut
loose from the diligence. There could be no mistake
about this, for the harness still hung to them.

“Can you ride?” I asked.

She nodded her head. Then we set to work.
Having caught the mules without difficulty, I took
off their superfluous harness and put her on the back
of one of them, mounting the other myself. There
was no time to lose, and we both of us knew it.
Just as we were starting I heard a voice behind me
calling “senor.” Drawing the pistol
from my pocket, I swung round to find myself confronted
by a Mexican.

“No shoot, senor,” he said in broken English,
for this man had served upon an American ship, “Me
driver, Antonio. My mate go down there,”
and he pointed to the precipice; “he dead, me
not hurt. You run from bad men, me run too, for
presently they come look. Where you go?”

“To Mexico,” I answered.

“No get Mexico, senor; bad men watch road and
kill you with machete so,” and he made
a sweep with his knife, adding “they not want
you live tell soldiers.”

“Listen,” said Emma. “Do you
know the hacienda, Concepcion, by the town
of San Jose?”

“Yes, senora, know it well, the hacienda
of Senor Gomez; bring you there to-morrow.”

“Then show the way,” I said, and we started
towards the hills.

All that day we travelled over mountains as fast as
the mules could carry us, Antonio trotting by our
side. At sundown, having seen nothing more of
the brigands, who, I suppose, took it for granted that
we were dead or were too idle to follow us far, we
reached an Indian hut, where we contrived to buy some
wretched food consisting of black frijole beans
and tortilla cakes. That night we slept
in a kind of hovel made of open poles with a roof
of faggots through which the water dropped on us,
for it rained persistently for several hours.
To be more accurate, Emma slept, for my nerves were
too shattered by the recollection of our adventure
with the brigands to allow me to close my eyes.

I could not rid my mind of the vision of that coach,
broken like an eggshell, and of those shattered shapes
within it that this very morning had been men full
of life and plans, but who to-night were—­what?
Nor was it easy to forget that but for the merest
chance I might have been one of their company wherever
it was gathered now. To a man with a constitutional
objection to every form of violence, and, at any rate
in those days, no desire to search out the secrets
of Death before his time, the thought was horrible.

Leaving the shelter at dawn I found Antonio and the
Indian who owned the hut conversing together in the
reeking mist with their serapes thrown across
their mouths, which few Mexicans leave uncovered until
after the sun is up. Inflammation of the lungs
is the disease they dread more than any other, and
the thin night air engenders it.